“God bless the child that’s got his own.”

There’s no damn business like show business – you have to smile to keep from throwing up.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.

The only reason they’re out there is to see me fall into the damn orchestra pit.

Sometimes it’s worse to win a fight than to lose.

When Lester plays, he almost seems to be singing; one can almost hear the words.

The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can’t sing.

I’ve been told that nobody sings the word ‘hunger’ like I do.

I don’t think I’m singing. I feel like I’m playing a horn, What comes out is what I feel.

You can’t copy anybody and end with anything. If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling.

A kiss that is never tasted, is forever and ever wasted.

And when you’re poor, you grow up fast.

Don’t be in such a hurry.

I never had a chance to play with dolls like other kids. I started working when I was six years old.

I never hurt nobody but myself and that’s nobody’s business but my own.

I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years.

Somebody once said we never know what is enough until we know what’s more than enough.

I admire [Alex] Salmond in many ways but my problem with him has always been this independence thing within the EU, which is rubbish.

When no one aids you, you build your own legs.

You have to let individuals make their own choices and respect that, even if it’s your own child. And that’s what was taken away from me. My father passed away thinking I still had to go back to his way of believing.

In this age, the man who dares to think for himself and to act independently does a service to his race.

There’s going to have to be investigations, and an independent investigation, into the Trump campaign and the Trump administration’s relationship to Russia.

Mass democracy, mass morality and the mass media thrive independently of the individual, who joins them only at the cost of at least a partial perversion of his instincts and insights.

It’s been such a gift that there was so much TV and independent film happening in New York that I could be a part of.

When the doors to television were opened to me, that was quite a surprise.